Identity and access management, welcome to another episode of
the identity at the center podcast.
I'm Jeff. Jeff and that's Jim.
Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff.
How you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
I think I'm still healthy. You never know though.
I think with all that's going on.
There's this major coronavirus out there that Center you get it
and you don't know that you've got it for a little bit, maybe a
manifest in the beginning, like it's a regular cold and all
that. So I guess I'm joining the the
Paranoid paranoid, Millions. Well, you and I are traveling
this week. So we're in Washington DC and
you know, I think, you know, when I left Chicago area, Monday
O'Hare Airport, which is one of the busiest in the world was
very opposite of that. I mean, just empty Gates, you
know, lots of room to spread out.
So it's definitely, you know, taking a hit.
I think the Corona virus time travel, but even since Monday,
The temperature of the situation has changed drastically with the
announcement of it that have been made in that least in the
u.s. Throughout the course of the
week. So, most of the sporting weeks
of decided to suspend, you know, play.
And there's talk now that March Madness might be kids, you know,
might be cancelled, so lots of stuff going on.
Yeah, it's it's it's unfortunate.
But I think that it's the right time to take drastic measures.
I mean, there's kind of you have to kind of look at what other
countries have done and what has been successful in.
Looks like they've got things more or less under control in
China which with the population of that country.
You wouldn't think it would be something.
That would be easy to do yet. It seems like they've kind of
slowed the spread which I think is really, it's important.
So, you know, obviously I'm not an expert and eschewing
information about coronavirus. Carly doesn't really add to the
global wealth of information, but you think about it like this
is that there's a certain number of people who are going to
become infected with coronavirus.
It's but if it all happens in one weekend or in one short
period of time, Versus spreading it out.
It really changes the impact on the medical system because you
know, 100 people show up to the hospital and one hour or one day
or one week, There's totally different scenarios.
So, yeah, I think it's important that we take the right
precautions and, and we, as individuals, I think so.
This is what this would be. My PSA is that we as individuals
of people keep telling me. Well, you know, you're young and
you're healthy, you'll be fine. And we can't just take the view
of. How does this affect me?
We have to be thinking about others.
And, you know, we might come into contact with people who do
have compromised immune systems, or as an advanced age or we
could wind up. In fact, infecting somebody who
does contact those populations a lot and that would be a really
sad situation. So I think we've taken upon
ourselves to make sure that we're not becoming part of the
Even if it doesn't directly make us sick or directly kill us.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
This isn't definitely, definitely not a medical
podcast, but I think my PSA would be if you're sick or you
think you might be sick, just stay home.
I mean, I know it's easier said than done for a lot of folks,
but you're not helping the situation.
If you're spreading it around, I kind of felt bad this week
because it's also allergy season and, you know, yesterday we were
in the client office and all of a sudden Sudden, you know, that
morning. I just started have, you know,
probably allergy. So I'm sitting there, you know,
sniffing and and sneezing. And, you know, I told, I told
our customers like, hey, you know, if you're not comfortable
being here, like these are allergies and I feel fine.
But if you want me to go back to the hotel and work, I'm happy to
do that, you know, want to make sure that, you know, people are
okay with it. But yeah, some reason things
like, oh, that's it. I was in the room when you said
that and she's like, no, you're fine and thinking I sent him
home, get him here. But the good news is, I woke up
to this morning and I was like, okay, that's fine.
Like nothing going on. So yeah, so so far, I think, you
know, movie, we've dodged things but you know, coronavirus
definitely has had an impact on the business world.
And then kind of got at least me thinking and probably us
thinking from an identity and access management perspective.
What are some of the things that, you know, this type of
situation, brings to light. And the first thing that I
thought of was, you know, VPN Ben and I go back to way way
back in my history. Well, the companies I used to
work for didn't have a lot of remote workers.
So when there was a reason to work from home for a mass amount
of people, the DPN would always crash because it couldn't handle
the number of people connecting. So got me kind of think about
that, and it makes me wonder how many companies that have
recently announced, you know, they want their workers to stay
home. How many of those people are
those companies had, you know the appropriate VPN support to
be able to support that great. Well, I mean, it may be a
situation where if you haven't moved to a third-party VPN at
this point, you know, you have some kind of Hardware device on
your network that kind of constricts how many connections
you can have if you're in a situation where you do have?
That Hardware dependency. You may be may be too late to do
much and you might want to look at something like, well first, I
thought you wanted you want to test it and and really know how
much how much traffic you can support, how many users
concurrent users you can support, then you may want to
look at, you know, scheduling certain folks to have their
amount of time to be on the BPM and who are some people may need
to We get an hour day or something to synchronize emails
or something like that, or maybe it sounds kind of silly.
But at this point, you're probably having to prioritize
that kind of connection, but it's really going to be a black.
I would think if you know appropriate planning wasn't done
in the, this scenario wasn't kind of planned for not
specifically, coronavirus put some kind of scenario where they
all of a sudden everybody has to work from home.
And can we remain productive visit?
Company have not but was also something I've been encouraging
clients. When I do see a hardware
dependency on VPN or a dependency on their own VPN
configuration. So, you know really ought to
look at Outsourcing that to a third party like a an AT&T or
something like that. Where you know, you can pretty
much I think call and increase the number of users who are
still probably some partner dependency, but I think if it's,
you're leveraging A third party data center.
People are connecting in through that, everything was kind of
virtualized in your more depending on their hard work.
Right? And if you use something like
split tunneling, only sending traffic back to your network
that needs to be there and take advantage of the cloud services
and connecting to them directly for the internet, you know,
obviously the appropriate security measures don't place
like to factor a multi-factor at that sort of thing, that can
also leave E8. Some of the burden especially
since You know, a lot of companies now are are using
things like Office 365, and Google suite and stuff like
that. Yeah, a lot of my recommendation
to our clients throughout moving to a third party VPN had more to
do with security. Because one of the things we
find, especially with smaller companies with a smaller
Workforce that they maintain their own VPN during VPN
Hardware, is that, you know, the sugar, Keep it updated with the
latest and greatest security and things.
And yes, they might have the cheapest solution.
But if you wind up getting hacked again, one of having
security issues, cheapest isn't always the cheapest, right?
I imagine that if remote connectivity was not part of a,
you know, business continuity or Disaster Recovery plan that I
would expect is probably going to become part of the plan.
You know, pretty much right away for folks to have that in place
right now, right? Some other things that kind of
thought about here, you know, having been in this position
from a identity admin perspective and operations was
people not having the right permissions in place to be able
to work remotely there. Sometimes there's a dependency.
I'm being, you know, on the network and and, you know, being
able to get the resources file shares, sorts of things, and
people start to extend outside of that.
You start to receive an influx of access requests.
And of course, everything's urgent because everyone's
working from home in an emergency situation and that can
that can sometimes wreak havoc on a on an I am operations team
as well. Yeah, hopefully the investment
has been made in the past to automate a lot of the access
request processes and automated provisioning.
Most organizations are not somewhere in between state,
where they've got some Automation and other other areas
not as much. And yeah, I can definitely lead
to that. Overworked kind of situation.
I think one thing that should we plan for is I think really we
have Watch for that potential Spike and be able to, you know,
ask people who maybe work shifts or and shift work can sometimes
be more feasible when people are working from home.
It might be more willing to do something like that, since they
don't have to, you know, be in the office and be away from
their families, but those are, those are some potential
options, shift work, and it's really going to be hard to
maybe. Add people and adding people in
the, you know, I guess I'm hoping is that this whole thing
where people are having to work remotely and businesses shut
down and be kind of relay Showdown is that we're looking
at like a four to eight week kind of situation.
And, you know, and it's probably somewhat rolling.
I don't think everybody's going to shut down overnight, but you
already exciting to see it in very public institutions, like
the sports leagues, were Really shouldn't things down.
And a lot of conferences are getting cancer and things like
that. I think a lot of office workers
are going to start working remotely in the next week or
two. And I think that hopefully this
whole thing only lasts, you know, a month or two months and
that really get the, the spread of the virus under control and
that time. Yeah, and I think that brings up
another issue where you have people who Maybe don't work from
home, a lot or ever. And now they're trying to log on
with maybe, you know, an account.
They haven't used in a while and I need a password reset and I
know a lot of companies struggle for instance, with like, active
directory accounts and having to be on the domain to get their
password reset, but they can't get on the domain because
they're remote. I know, we started, I struggle
with this, in the past with, you know, so the colors worked as
okay. Well, is there an office?
You can go to so that, you know, we can sink down the password.
Change essentially to your device.
I haven't really seen a great solution for that yet.
And I think that's one of the benefits.
I think of moving to the cloud things like, you know, Office
365 and G, sweet and stuff like that.
But I guess things are extremely rare.
Is the biggest thing that I've seen that has impressed me as
there are some like full-time VPN solution.
So once you launch your device, that connects the vpm without
even having to How to log into the desktop to your path?
So other words, full-time connected BPM one.
Thought I had. As you were kind of describing
this scenario is, you know, whenever I would You know how my
password locked out of usually wasn't because I just forgot my
password. I'm sure that does happen.
But the biggest reason I would get my password log out is that
it would say the pastor is going to expire.
In five days. I get to 14 days, three days and
then be Friday and would expire over the weekend.
I come in on Monday. I launched my computer on Monday
and I was locked out and I think that what might help is.
Is maybe a communication people that, hey, when you start
getting prompted for a password resets, be really helpful.
If you got a head of things and change your password and now,
wait until the last minute, right?
Or maybe even do that as part of your exit plan from the office.
You know, I don't know how feasible it is, but for folks
that are going to be, you know, going out work remotely for
time, reset it while you're still in the office, so that you
don't have to worry about password expiration, while
you're while you'r, Right. That's right.
You know, I think this is a, this is a time where probably
people are that coming up with a lot of these plans, but you can
see where if you had kind of thought through these kind of
plans well in advance. So say you were thinking about
these things a year or two ago and you start running into?
Okay. Well, how are people going to
contact the help desk? Okay.
Well, you know, we need to get soft bones instead and wear red
on the Ready. So that if we need people to
work from home, they could use cellphones and transfer their
phone to that. Okay, you know, maybe you don't
want to pay for full soft. I'm full-time, softphone
licenses, but maybe that's something that you could, you
would be willing to pay for in this scenario all of a sudden.
We're at least four people who, you know, maybe work on the
service desk, where they answer Central phone number.
Well, now, all of a sudden you can you can do something like
you. Soft bone, the VPN question.
And we talked about a little bit ago.
It's this is why you have to constantly, you know, if you're
in it or your information security be thinking about
disaster planning is its kind of call thises as something like
that. Alright.
Business continuity planning, at least.
Yeah. And part of that playing taken
to affect or take into account how it affects operations.
I was the on-call person during a snowstorm in Chicagoland area,
many years ago, and I got absolutely crushed.
You know, I and I'm dealing with, you know, six feet of
snow. It was a blizzard in my front
yard and, you know, basically my pager at the time, you know,
just going crazy every minute because people had so many
issues and we at that time, we really hadn't prepared or
thought about how you would support.
I am operations. So in that sort of situation,
you know, you're used to getting maybe, you know, one or two
calls a night at most and then all of a sudden it's, you know,
all day for 23, straight days and trying to, you know, filter
those requests for the rest of the team to keep up with it,
became a real challenge for us. It really depends on the nature
of your business because like, I know probably where you were at
that time retail operation, where those calls her like we
can't sell things. We can't conduct business.
Three left out. Now what you know gag working
environments where you could you could take hours or days to fix
problems, but not in certain environments that were certain
issues, right? And then here, you know, your
private security team. So how do you validate these
people who are calling when, you know, they don't remember their
own pin numbers or Seeker questions and they haven't, you
know, registered any of that stuff ahead of time.
So it becomes a real real. Pain in the butt for the
operation standpoint. So I'm exactly the start to work
through self-service options on that, but it's not a cure-all.
Even am also wondering, is that you and I have worked from home
for a long time. I've personally been working
from home full-time for over a decade.
And are you just so many offices where they say?
Well, you know, we've I think their culture, I'm wondering if
after all said and done with this, if it becomes a cultural
More place where they say, you know what, this couple of months
we had everybody working from home and went pretty well.
Maybe we could get by with less office space or maybe we can
give people a better work-life balance.
By letting them work from home. It might work out.
Yeah, I mean that's knowledge. He's there for sure.
I think it's a trust issue. I think for whatever reason,
some companies trust their employees, some don't you know
from from that perspective and I get it but I'm a big fan of
working from home. I think you can be more
productive sometimes at home. Then you can be in the office
but I don't know if this is the right time to measure it because
I feel like there would be maybe a little bit of a false
measurement because everyone else is doing the same thing and
there's Ready, a built-in downward movement on whatever
industry it is, because of all the issues going on.
So it's difficult to say. Oh, yeah, we were just as
effective when you know, you're, if you're have any type of
business right now, you're probably feeling some level of
impact with the coronavirus, you know, whether or not if it's not
now, probably at some point because it's starting to trickle
down to more and more things with the sports leagues, being
can't, you know, being suspended or cancelled, you know, I'm sure
travel has taken a huge hit. Right?
You? And I were laughing earlier.
I think we're probably the only people staying in this hotel
right now. Raised plenty of seats available
on my flight from d.c. To Chicago tomorrow.
So I was gonna say yeah, if I haven't gotten upgraded to First
Class very much since Northwest got bought by Delta like, you
know, eight years ago or whatever it was.
And I gotta create a first class in the way home, both legs.
I'm like, all right, nicely in one sense is nice, but there's
something know it's, you know, Get upgraded from Atlanta from
d.c. To Atlanta out of the blue right
now. They'd manacled cetis always
looking at the bright side of things.
That's it. Yeah, there was nothing to that
you brought up earlier and I'll let y'all let you have it at
once to hear thunder. But it was around some things
that might be taking place with more frequency when there's this
type of situation. Yeah.
No, I mean, you know, sometimes
these kind of situations bring out the best in people.
There's a bridge out the worst in people.
And, you know, I think that the number of scams go up when you
have these kind of situations sometimes.
And we all know that phishing attempts, maybe everybody who's
listening, probably gets, like, attempted to be fished like five
times a day, you know, my, my own thing.
It feels like half. The email said the L people,
trying to get me to login to handle an issue for something.
I didn't buy or whatever, you know.
But I also could see the same scammers trying to play off of
this coronavirus situation. And, you know, I think the
biggest defense against phishing again is education.
It's people don't know anyone. Nobody wants to get fish, but
people get tripped. And the thing about getting
tricked is, you know, usually if you're getting an email about
something, clicking the link, put you into To the scam
website. So the best thing is if you're
getting asked to too late for something, don't click the link,
go and type the URL in your browser or something that, but
even if you do click the link, there's ways to look at the URL
to make sure that you're going to something legitimate.
So now, we're talking about things.
Generally. Hopefully your organization is
put together some educational materials already with Urge to
avoiding being finished. I know if similar organizations
that on a routine basis go out and you know, ethically hack or
ethically fish their employees to find where the people are
susceptible to this. So this might be a time where
you want to do that again, right?
Because I think the fear is driving people towards being
more susceptible to fall for this stuff, but it's just, you
know, I guess the reason to bring it up is just you know,
sometimes these these having Adventures, provide an
opportunity for people, people to act poorly, right?
And, you know, the phishing campaign is definitely something
that is part of that whole security awareness and all the
research that I've read and seen indicates that
dollar-for-dollar, security, awareness training and have
provides the most value. But it's something that has to
be continued because threats are always evolving and it's
something that, you know, you need to continually remind your
Workforce of what to be on the lookout for what to expect.
You know, if you're getting an MFA notification out of the blue
and you're not expecting it, don't click on it, right?
So it's common sense. But you know, the awareness is I
think is a big part of that and that has a big big impact on the
success of phishing emails back. To solve a completely, but, you
know, being vigilant and knowing what to look for.
I think is a big, big help. You know, it's right.
So, you know, based on coronavirus is been a lot of
different things happening with different conferences.
I was at RSA a few weeks and, you know, it was, it was a bit
of a Down year for attendance already and I don't think it was
quite at the, at the current Panic level that we're seeing,
but it was definitely accounted for and turns out.
I got an email last night, informing me that there were
people at the conference that have been infected.
So that's something nice to get. Get octane, which is something I
think you were going to attend in a couple weeks has been
canceled and to convert it into a virtual conference.
So disappointing. You're not going to go to San
Francisco, but probably not as disappointed that you won't be
improving. The odds that you might get some
sort of issue, right? Yeah.
I mean, obviously, I don't need any trouble right now.
I do I don't want to see, I hate the fact that the travel
industry taking your own. Change again, and I hate the all
I heard about the was the conference in Austin, South by
Southwest, you know, they cancel that conference and then the
next day he had to let go of like 60 people.
That's hardly news. You know, I hate hearing about
that same time, you know, it's we talked about earlier.
We went to slow the spread or who they calling it a slow.
Slow the curve or something like that.
Flatten, the curve. Are you saying brother?
Words, we made this is going to spread.
We want to slow down the pace of which is spread so that I
realize that showing up at the hospital I went and that we have
resources that we can spread out and and help people at the same
time. So, you know, it is
disappointing that they're having Hampshire's not just so
octane is the octave conference. I was going to attend I heard at
Google and Facebook God. To cancel their conference.
The really good thing about the way they handled the octane.
One egg. I think this is a lesson or I
thought they did just a really good job and how they cancel
their conference. They canceled it well in
advance. So, you know, over four weeks in
advance. They refunded everybody.
Alter money personally, good to go and apply for a refund or
anything like that. There's plenty time to cancel
your hotel. Now.
I do have a fly. It's scheduled.
Not going to give me the money back for the flight, but I
didn't feel like I was taking advantage of, or anything like
that. Like a weasel.
The absolute last minute to cancel, or they just cancelled
because other people were canceling.
They got out ahead of it and they took care of it.
No, I just saw that Major League, Baseball, suspended, the
rest of spring training. And maybe it's just because I'm
like, so locked into TV now, but it feels like they waited till
the last They're like them the last major spiritually to try
and do something about it. And it kind of felt felt to me.
Like the only reason they cancel is because everybody else
canceling that they want to look like they didn't care something
but to me, that's exactly how locally look like, you know,
they waited till the last minute to deal with it.
Yeah. We got the leaders in the
flowers and I don't know if he's seen this.
This is something just popped up while we were talking here.
Is that they've actually push the baseball start date that.
Act two weeks before the regular season.
Now, so things are literally changing, you know, by the
minute. As these organizations, try to
figure out, you know, how to handle this type of situation.
And like I said, I think octave did a really good job of keeping
people informed. And so did our SAR say sent
multiple emails ahead of time? And you know, I still went never
still plenty of attendees are over 30,000 and but there was
plenty of hand sanitizer. And I think, you know, people
were a little more cautious around it.
But yeah, OCTA did a really good job.
Got ahead of it and what I like and it's part of a silver lining
is they've now turned it into a virtual conference which is
going to be free. So if you weren't able to attend
anyway, now there's you know, some, some free sessions that
you'll be able to get to not sure what the details are on
that yet. And I think we're looking at
having Andy from OCTA. One of our friends, come on the
show in a couple weeks and maybe we'll have some more information
around that time. Yeah, actually and so Jeff
speaking. I'm hand sanitizer going to
release the issue, just open source, your formula for the
hand sanitizer that's going to take over the world.
Right? So, the standard the standard
recipe is two parts. Alcohol isopropyl, and one part
of aloe vera, right? Or gel isn't like that.
I think that you probably want to add maybe some bacon grease
to that because everyone likes bacon, right?
Why people talk about using like, Herbal Essence.
Something like that, you know, make it smell good, but I'm a
bacon fan. So I think that would be great.
I think my dogs would love that too.
Oh, yeah, and I think you'd also get like a nice coating of your
hand. So viruses, wouldn't be able to
penetrate that greasy film that you have on your hands.
I Jeff, I think you're onto something here.
Yeah. This is kind of like what was
that? Like, I don't there's some
company that makes, you know, in quotes that you can't see, you
know, man candles or something like that.
This could be like, Like, you know, man, man hand, sanitizers,
like bacon. Pizza cheese burgers, you know,
things like that. Yeah.
I know. There's a, there's all kinds of
men product. Now, there's one Walmart, their
so-called dude, wipes to place a dude wipe.
Someone someone's million-dollar idea.
That was probably on Shark Tank that person's on an island
somewhere on a boat. Yeah.
All right. I know we've been talking for a
while. We want to talk baseball, or do
you want to save that for later? No, let's have at it, man.
We, you know, I think this is probably working out well for
the Astros and the Red Sox who are, you know, the so just so
everybody do. So, the Astros were found guilty
of stealing signs electronically in the 2017. 18 and 20 18
Seasons. It's supposed to be a report
coming out that the Red Sox in some way.
Use technology to cheat in 2018 as a year that they pretty much
ran the table and they want 108 games there in the pole position
all season long and then just dance their way through the
playoffs. And so the debate that you and I
got To was. Is this really cheating?
I come from the standpoint of, absolutely, it's cheating.
I'm also a New York Yankees fan and the Yankees got bats out of
the playoffs by those two cheating teams in the last few
years. In 2017.
They got to the final game of the ALCS against the Astros who
were stealing signs. And they lost the game in
Houston and say what they were doing was they were using the
Centerfield camera, which is I think pretty much a public
camera. It's what feeds the if he's the
network TV with a view from center field and they were able
to then zoom in on it and they had a TV.
They had a room set up by the Dugout in the Astros Stadium
Minute. Maid Park where they'd have a
guy watching the signs at the capture would be putting down,
and it was going to be a fastball.
Ball, he would do nothing. It was going to be a breaking
ball, which can be a curveball changeup, things like that.
But usually breaking those move, he would bang on trash can and
based on thing on trash trash. Can this guy who's not on the
team? He was an employee of the
Asher's and you could actually watch some of the game for you
to hear the trash as saying, supposedly like that.
It one time where was happening in the kit.
The catcher got up. He's like, okay, I put down the
sides. There is that damn trash can
again, and, you know, I think the argument you were making was
well, person first argument that I would make is that they
explicitly banned using technology in game two, still
signs. So, there are very clear about
your not to do this, but I think the That you were raising was
well was the court should not good enough.
In other words, where they're signaling of the signs.
Not good enough. The thing is that when the
catcher to the pitcher signals are kind of brought back to what
was encryption in 1925 and you're comparing it with.
I can watch you from center field, using a high-tech camera.
And you know, you know, I It's combination of the, if they put
down one time. It's obvious that they put down
multiple signs, you know, a lot of times people are good at,
figuring out indicators and things like that.
So, an indicator would be something like when I put down a
to the next sign is going to be the pitcher when you throw.
So I might put down a 3 which would be a slider.
Or if it done the to I put down a 1 and B, throw a fastball and
so basically those any kind of form of encryption are human.
Is like, we agree, you know, before the pictures trailer,
before we start the Inning on, like, what the?
I'm just using my hands to show signals or my fingers.
And you're comparing that with using high-tech equipment.
That's why they banned it. If we're saying that hey the
catcher's going to have a little microphone.
He can tell the pitch to the picture or I don't know, some
way you push a Yeah, I like a little phony, get some text
messages, a picture and say poor Francisco.
I'd love to see a catcher. Try to send a text message with
that glove on his hand. Yeah.
I do PS4 unto its own.
I guess. We really haven't figured out
what exactly fair comparison would be.
But ultimately, what it is that you've got this encryption
methodology that is based on non-technology.
And using technology to break it, and the gave up one team of
distinct advantage over the other and to me, that's got
shooting. But more than that.
It was explicitly banned. He said, don't do this and they
anyway. So I'm definitely not a baseball
fan and I don't know, all the ins and outs and the rules and
was banned or whatever. But, for my completely, Layman's
view of what happened the way I see it is that that the Astros
were able to, basically hack the teams.
They were playing against by figuring out what their password
was. And those teams didn't do
anything to guard against that, it didn't change signs in the
middle of a game. Or maybe if they did they just
got react again. So it's almost like, you know,
the Astros were Brute Force hacking the signals from the
catcher to the pitcher and obviously that gives then, you
know the benefit of knowing whether a breaking ball is
coming or not so you can lay off or, you know, Swing Away on a
fastball but I put it also on the security of that
conversation between the catcher and the Pitcher, no different
than me standing at second base, watching as well and figuring it
out. Or, you know, sometimes the
bullpen is all the way out and, you know, in the Outfield around
it, you know, I'm the bass lines, things like that.
So I think the catch here and I wasn't aware of, this was the
electronic use, but if I was sitting in the stands and just
watching with a pair of binoculars, I could figure out
the same way. It wasn't like there was, you
know, this super Advanced, you know.
Hacking machine that was doing, it was someone who literally
watching and saying, okay, I figured it out.
Now. Let me go tell my guys what it
is. So one thing from kind of
baseball tradition standpoint is that usually when Teamster down
multiple signs in other words, you know in a very simple
scenario. Put that into 1, that means
throw fastball, but don't to the Meuse or curveball.
However, when you have somebody on base, typically what they do
is they put down multiple signs and maybe it's the third sign or
maybe it's the last sign that I put down, but that's the that
you throw. So yes, I salt it.
It's salted, right? It's not quite hash, but it's
somehow makes up you only do that.
Typically, when there's a guy on second because it's a guy on
first or third. They can't see between your
legs. And so, you know, this is
baseball tradition. I think it I think this is also,
this is Sport. So there is a gaming aspect to
it. But there's also a certain level
of Ethics expected out of the sport.
It's kind of like let's say you were in a fantasy football
league and I somehow, you know, broke into your account and
change your change your line up, right before the games.
And I said, well, you didn't set your password strong enough.
Of, dude, you cheated. Let's be real.
You cheated, just because I didn't set my security from him
out. You don't break into somebody's
account, and, and do that. So, I think that there's a
certain level of Ethics involved, and I think there is
definitely the ethics, part of it.
It's a question new. If the catcher knew that you
were using the center-field camera, that was even a
possibility. Then they would change, they
would have to do the multiple signs, every pitch.
And I think then if it's like, that was a Level Playing Field
and that would be one thing. But it was kind of like, whoa,
you're doing something that we all know you're not allowed to
do. Nobody else is doing it because
baseball sending members saying, don't do it.
So, he didn't think they had seems the same for nobody was on
second base, but apparently you didn't get the memo.
Did you get the memo? Well, I think there was also it
was kind of a enough as if hearsay or, you know, rumor
going around of it. So, I don't think it was
something that just came out of the blue.
I think people suspected something was going on and I
still think that, you know, the probably could have done more to
secure that communication knowing that this has been heard
of talked about. And, you know, there was a
suspicion. Something was taking place, and
yet, they, you know, it seems like at least, you know, teams
didn't really take it seriously or even do anything or at least
enough to, you know, prevent the interception of those calls and
then being able to relay it back to the player lose.
Another thing. That's an interesting angle.
So Mo be is decided to come out and say, you know, we're Banning
the use of technology for stealing signs.
There was Ice question. Well, why why not?
I mean, using more technology throughout the game.
I mean, you can't watch a baseball game today without
getting the Amazon web services statcast information.
Every player is slow motion reviewed.
If necessary, they're talking about having an electronic
Strike Zone. And some point.
I think they're experimenting with it and some leaves.
So the bottom line is, that technology is becoming more and
more the game. Why not rather than Saying, you
can't still signs using electronics that you just get
rid of this, this archaic way of giving sandwiching, the catcher
to the Pitcher, have some kind of device, obviously technically
a text message, but have something for him to send
information back to the picture. So that, you know, he can be
getting a message and not have to worry about science.
The only thing I can say is this is always been my thing.
Doing about baseball. There's no, for more technology
used the more, you separate the pro game and The Sandlot game,
and the further less alike. They are the less interesting.
It is to me to play, send letters little kid, you know,
when I grew up playing, Sandlot boys, pretty much, you know, the
same technology that they use from the big losers, pretty much
men. And now we have And electronic
are potentially upcoming electronic strikes on this not
in place today, but instant replay and and all these other
things. So it's a balance.
I think it's about that. One thing about baseball as
compared to all the other sports as like tradition is considered
sacred. How so when you know, people got
really mad about Barry Bonds. Breaking the homerun record is
because like You know, it's like the members that you're throwing
up or just absolutely ludicrous and a guy like Henry Aaron took
20 years to hit all those home runs and you know, then Barry
Bonds comes along and takes steroids and he's hit maybe home
runs a year and would never been done before.
So that's why people, it has to be.
So give them are upset about that stuff.
I think than other sports. Well, I still haunt him.
I promise it. Essentially the Astros hat, all
the teams are playing against figured out their balls and, you
know, their pitch selection passwords and exploited.
It. Should they have done it.
Now, they use technology that wasn't known as well.
But that's how I'm looking at it.
I know worry about up on time, but let's go back to three years
ago when the st. Louis Cardinals hired away.
Somebody from the Astros that guy came over to the Cardinals,
they never Locked out his account.
There's a real. I am issue.
There were locked out his account.
He went back over and was somehow able to log into their
scouting system was old credentials and download a bunch
of data. You got caught the ash, the
Cardinals and really wrinkled. The penalty was pretty severe.
I think a few people got fired over it.
But, you know, is that all gamesmanship?
Let's say you, I say no, I think that's clearly not on the field.
And I think that was, that was purely a reason to make sure you
have good. I'm off boarding.
Procedure is employees. I think that's how I am ruling
that as a poor off-boarding performance by I guess it was
Houston, right? Yes.
I think that's corporate Espionage.
And I think they did the right thing throwing the book at them.
But I also think that the scientist Is cheating as well?
I think it's, I think it's cheating as well.
But I think the team should have done better at trying to guard
against it. It's like saying, you know, you
shouldn't hack, my password. People are gonna do it.
Right. So expect expect to try and put
some defenses up against it. Yeah.
It did. The only difference again my
final argument. The only difference is that this
is a sport where certain level Of Ethics are required, and it
was teams within the same week. This Wilson like the cold war,
like Russia versus United States or something like that.
It's right. You know, this is a really
friendly league of colleagues. It's just a game.
Yeah, but that's what we get all excited about.
Yep. Exactly.
All right. I think we're in pretty good
shot. We can shape, we can probably
wrap it up there and now you're going to catch a flight here in
a little bit, kind of a weird show.
I think for us today because you're kind of little bit all
over the place talking about world events and little bit of
baseball. And by the time folks here this
it'll be Monday the 16th probably.
So we'll see how the situation changed last couple days, but
hopefully we gave you guys some some food for thought and some
ideas and how to maybe approach some of the issues that D come
out of here with the virus impact, or other things to think
about. If you've got questions or
comments or you think I'm crazy about the Astros hacking every
team, they faced with a pitch selection, you know, you can
feel free to email us at questions at identity at the
center.com and on behalf of Jim will talk to you guys in the
next one. You've been listening to the
identity of the center podcast for more episodes of visit
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